Wholphin

It’s 1956. A group of high-school students are led into the gymnasium on the word that today’s class is going to be a little bit different. A giant screen has been put up in front of one of the walls. The lights come down and the reels start turning. The logo for Centron Productions comes up, the little company from Lawrence, Kansas. The film promises to “discuss problems in social living.� The students might have expected some cold, boring narration telling them how to live correctly in this world, but not today, not with a Centron film. Instead the film opens with a boy pacing nervously in a dark room. There’s a narrator, but he’s not lecturing to the students seated in their chairs. He speaks to the boy, John Taylor, about the guilt he’s been bearing for his actions. He has committed one of those mortal sins within a Centron film: he has cheated on a school test. It will haunt him for the next twelve minutes of his cinematic existence. This was the world of Centron’s educational films of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. This was the teenage world of Herk Harvey.

Russell Mosser and Arthur Wolf created Centron as a way for them to pursue their filmmaking dreams without leaving Lawrence. It was after World War II, where G.I.’s were trained through specially made instructional films, so Mosser and Wolf got into the fruitful world of making educational films for civilians. They weren’t the first to produce such films, but they were to become the best at it.

Writers Wolf and Margaret “Trudy� Travis explored the dramatic side of teenage life. They didn’t create adolescent characters that were robotic role models for students. Other educational films felt shrill as they tried to scare kids, such as Sid Davis’ film. He gave us the homophobic, Boys Beware, with the predatory Ralph who had “a sickness that wasn’t visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious. You see, Ralph was a homosexual.� They weren’t gimmicky like King Film’s Mr. B Natural, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite. Centron’s films were completely down-to-Earth, or rather down-to-Lawrence, which means they couldn’t be more plain and direct in realizing their goals. The teenagers in Centron speak in flat Kansas accents and dress like they’re trying to compete with the wallpaper. They’re true to the inconspicuous teenagers that fill the hall of every high school. Then they’re thrown into the soul-splitting Centron drama of bullying and snobbery.

The teens in Centron’s films are full of worries and anxieties. They often break down into tears, as Jane Smith does in The Outsider, or scheme against one another, as Jean and Laura do in The Gossip. In their quest for a better understanding between young adults, Centron wasn’t afraid to present teens at their darkest. There were no easy answers, either. Most films end with the narrator asking the all-important “what do you think?â€? while a question mark stamps the final image of the film, in hopes of a discussion between teachers and students. By the end, the dysfunctions of all the characters are too strong to be wrapped up in anything resembling neat. Teenagers’ problems aren’t usually portrayed as this messy, at least not while being true to the claustrophobic world of adolescence at the same time. The only recent example I could think of was Judd Apatow and Paul Fieg’s “Freaks and Geeks,” the short-lived NBC dramedy that was true to how unglamorous yet still problematic Midwestern teenage life can be. It’s still rare to see anything close to resembling real teenagers, certainly those living in the “flyoverâ€? states, in television or films.

All these character flaws and complexities were brought to life by Harold “Herk� Harvey. Besides the idiosyncrasies of Wolf and Travis’s writing, it was Harvey’s knack for low-budget filmmaking that made Centron’s films the best of their weird little genre. Harvey knew how to create the right mood for whatever problem a film would be dealing with, such as the opening of Cheating. The ugliness of the characters behaviors would often be amplified by exaggerated close-ups. Watching these films I was surprised how Harvey was able to recreate the awkwardness of teenage life. The acting may have been stiff many times but perhaps that helped create this odd sense of drama. I couldn’t think of another stylized yet authentic-feeling depiction of teenagers other than the early issues of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s Amazing Spider-Man, where Ditko would draw lowly Peter Parker with angry clenched fists and jagged facial expressions. Like the Centron films they feel somewhat off-the-mark but work comfortably enough that they ring true.

Most important was the way Harvey staged characters having heart-to-hearts, as they would often. The scenes may have been unspectacular, but only because they recreated the mundanity in which the dramas of our own lives take place in. The greatest use of that is in The Snob. Sarah, the snob in question, is contemplating her place in her high school’s caste system while standing around in the kitchen. She talks it over with her father, who leaves by asking “All these people that you don’t like — aren’t they happier than you?â€? The words echo in Sarah’s head, and the audience feels like they’ve been cut with a knife.

Harvey would make the horror classic Carnival of Souls in the early ‘60s when on vacation from Centron. The film is a better showcase for Harvey’s ability to create scenes that get under your skin. Watch the scenes where Mary Henry (Candace Hillgoss) has to host the lecherous John Linden (Sidney Berger), and then think of what some of the Centron kids might have become.

The Snob is Centron’s masterpiece. It has all the pathos on display and their best player in the lead, Vera Stough. Stough rules this and her other Centron film, The Gossip. She is the dark-haired girl who knows how to stir up the rest of the kids around her. In The Gossip, it is done with evil glee, but in The Snob she is a much more sympathetic character, although just as tough and standoffish. Stough played all these qualities with the straight force Centron’s mini-movies needed. Seeing her act as the closest thing to a “bad girl� in a Centron film was always a joy; you know she had more flair and confidence than any of the other kids she was around.

Centron films may have been of their time and, Stough notwithstanding, Lawrence was perhaps not the center of thespian greatness. There is still something to respect in the intelligence and humanity they brought to education when they could have easily gotten away with cold and bland preaching. It is care that adults usually don’t take in dealing with teenagers in media, even half a century later.

All historical information for this article provided by Ken Smith’s “Mental Hygiene,” from Blast Books.